A Comparative Study of the First Computer Literacy Programs for Children in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union, 1970-1990
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Making Citizens of the Information Age: A Comparative Study of the First Computer Literacy Programs for Children in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union, 1970-1990 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Boenig-Liptsin, Margarita. 2015. Making Citizens of the Information Age: A Comparative Study of the First Computer Literacy Programs for Children in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union, 1970-1990. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845438 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Making Citizens of the Information Age: A comparative study of the first computer literacy programs for children in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union, 1970-1990 A dissertation presented by Margarita Boenig-Liptsin to The Department of History of Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History of Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts August 2015 © 2015 Margarita Boenig-Liptsin All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Sheila Jasanoff Margarita Boenig-Liptsin Making Citizens of the Information Age: A comparative study of the first computer literacy programs for children in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union, 1970-1990 ABSTRACT In this dissertation I trace the formation of citizens of the information age by comparing visions and practices to make children and the general public computer literate or cultured in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union. Computer literacy and computer culture programs in these three countries began in the early 1970s as efforts to adapt people to life in the information society as it was envisioned by scholars, thinkers, and practitioners in each cultural and sociopolitical context. The dissertation focuses on the ideas and influence of three individuals who played formative roles in propelling computer education initiatives in each country: Seymour Papert in the United States, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber in France, and Andrei Ershov in the Soviet Union. According to these pioneers, to become computer literate or computer cultured meant more than developing computer skills or learning how to passively use the personal computer. Each envisioned a distinctive way of incorporating the machine into the individual human’s ways of thinking and being—as a cognitive enhancement in the United States, as a culture in France, and as a partner in the Soviet Union. The resulting human-computer hybrids all demanded what I call a playful relationship to the personal computer, that is, a domain of free and unstructured, exploratory creativity. I trace the realization of these human-computer hybrids from their origins in the visions of a few pioneers to their embedding in particular hardware, software, and educational curricula, iii through to their development in localized experiments with children and communities, and finally to their implementation at the scale of the nation. In that process of extension, pioneering visions bumped up against powerful sociotechnical imaginaries of the nation state in each country, and I show how, as a result of that clash, in each national case the visions of the pioneers failed to be fully realized. In conclusion, I suggest ways in which the twentieth-century imaginaries of the computer literate citizen extend beyond their points of origin and connect to aspects of the contemporary constitutions of humans in the computerized world. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................. vii! Chapter 1: C is for Computer .............................................................................. 1! Imagining the computer literate citizen around the world ..................................... 20! Unlocking the human with the computer .................................................................. 31! Chapter 2: Building the Computer Literate Nation ........................................ 38! Imagining information societies ................................................................................. 41! United States – An age of anxiety............................................................................. 44! France – A prepared evolution .................................................................................. 53! Soviet Union – The tame information volcano ......................................................... 60! Adapting to information societies .............................................................................. 65! United States – Computer Literacy ........................................................................... 66! France – Culture informatique .................................................................................. 75! Soviet Union – Second literacy............................................................................... 103! Comparing Information Societies and Strategies of Adaptation .......................... 114! Chapter 3: Entrepreneurs of the Mind ........................................................... 118! Seymour Papert ......................................................................................................... 120! Papert and Jean Piaget ............................................................................................ 121! LOGO – A children's computer language ............................................................... 126! From literacy to fluency .......................................................................................... 131! Growing LOGO at MIT – “A totally different learning environment” .................. 138! Microworlds ............................................................................................................ 139! Constructionism ...................................................................................................... 141! Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber ............................................................................... 148! La ressource humaine ............................................................................................. 149! Making the Centre Mondial Informatique .............................................................. 154! Life of the Center: A “window open onto the human resource” ............................ 159! Each person as entrepreneur of the mind ................................................................ 170! Andrei Ershov ............................................................................................................ 172! Early work at the Computing Center in Novosibirsk .............................................. 173! Algorithmic thinking ............................................................................................... 176! “School Informatics”: Algorithmic thinking for all ................................................ 181! Enhancing the natural capacities of the mind ........................................................ 187! Chapter 4: Experiments in Play ...................................................................... 190! United States .............................................................................................................. 201! LOGO experiments with learning and learners ...................................................... 202! The child epistemologist and the computer Rorschach .......................................... 206! France ......................................................................................................................... 226! Research-actions in the neighborhood .................................................................... 227! Setting up an informatique environment ................................................................. 230! Soviet Union ............................................................................................................... 241! Experiments in building a new society ................................................................... 242! Young programmers at camp .................................................................................. 244! Masters of play .......................................................................................................... 262! Chapter 5: A Return to Rules .......................................................................... 266! United States .............................................................................................................. 271! v National developments of computer literacy .......................................................... 272! The Lamplighter School Project ............................................................................. 280! The fate of the computer fluent subject .................................................................. 286! France ......................................................................................................................... 290! The Centre Mondial Informatique (1981-1985) ..................................................... 292! Informatique pour tous (1985-1989) .....................................................................